I'm working, but I don't know if I should make the player one of Slicks entities, or make my own entity engine. Essentially all entities will be is the player and the npc-director; the npc-director in which itself will manage crowds of people walking in the town districts.

I'd like some feedback on everyone elses opinions before I get too far in.

“Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is the doing something else.” ~Leonardo da Vinci

I don't recall slick 2D having an entity manager, only some of its extensions that have and a few tutorials that explains how to make one.

My advise, make your own, it will be alot easier to understand whats going on, than using someone else's system.

My idea's:For your crowd manager(npc-director), make it an entity, and make all the npc's entities too, have the npc-director create and remove npc's first thing per loop, maybe using an npc pool, npc-director could assign them behaviors too.Then have the npc's control what they do on their own.

This is what i would do based on your description.But its up to you, to decide how it should work.

java-gaming.org is not responsible for the content posted by its members, including references to external websites,
and other references that may or may not have a relation with our primarily
gaming and game production oriented community.
inquiries and complaints can be sent via email to the info‑account of the
company managing the website of java‑gaming.org